Smart Base Installations: Applying Systems Engineering Techniques to the Agile Development of Multidisciplinary Systems of Systems Projects

Large-scale, Internet of Things projects often require significant change and adaptation in the project life cycle. This creates complexity when trying to effectively communicate information among multiple teams contributing to and interfacing within a project. This project uses agile project management and development while creating smart base software systems because of the limited and evolving stakeholder requirements, necessary collaboration with three other organizations, and undetermined methods. The agile process, however, creates unique challenges when applied to developing complex systems of systems with multiple stakeholders. Because agile management is a goal and not a predefined process, system developers need strategies to maintain the effectiveness of agile development. This research identifies challenges to system development and uses systems engineering (SE) principles to apply decision analysis and systems engineering methods (decision hierarchy, IDEF0, and swim lane diagram) to an agile project management framework. These methods facilitate the documentation of requirements, processes, ownership, and progress among multiple groups to enable a shared understanding and more effective progress reporting.